About This Artifact
More than three hundred metal objects were located and dug up during the two-week electromagnetic and metal-detector survey of Oak Island in August 1965, led by Peter Beamish of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, with nineteen students and instructor Richard Barber. Randall Sullivan gives the count in The Curse of Oak Island (2018). A photograph shows part of the haul laid out on open ground above the beach at Smith's Cove. The objects are arranged in two groups.
On the left are flat plate fragments and long curved straps, some of which look like barrel hoops. On the right are horseshoes, iron rings, bars, spikes, bolts, washers, and a short length of heavy pipe.
No catalogue of the finds, findspots for individual pieces, or dating has been published. Much of the material is consistent with farm, building, and search-era iron from the island's nineteenth- and twentieth-century occupation, and the photograph alone cannot separate older pieces from later ones.
Beamish ran a second survey in 1966. The present whereabouts of the 1965 objects are unknown.
Historical Context
Les MacPhie, "Review of Geophysical Investigations, Oak Island, Nova Scotia", Explore Oak Island Days 08 (22 June 2008), slides 17 and 22; Randall Sullivan, The Curse of Oak Island (2018)
Where It Was Found
Found at Island-wide survey. Location: the cove at the east end of Oak Island where the flood system's box drains were found in 1850.
